Ukrainian Prosecutors: Why Doesn't the U.S. Dept. of Justice Want Our Evidence on Democrats?

Joe and Hunter Biden in 2009 (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

by Thomas Neuburger

Wheels within wheels. This is from longtime investigative reporter John Solomon, writing in The Hill (emphasis mine throughout):

Ukrainian to US prosecutors: Why don't you want our evidence on Democrats?

Ukrainian law enforcement officials believe they have evidence of wrongdoing by American Democrats and their allies in Kiev, ranging from 2016 election interference to obstructing criminal probes. But, they say, they’ve been thwarted in trying to get the Trump Justice Department to act.

Kostiantyn Kulyk, deputy head of the Prosecutor General’s International Legal Cooperation Department, told me he and other senior law enforcement officials tried unsuccessfully since last year to get visas from the U.S. embassy in Kiev to deliver their evidence to Washington.

Intrigued? Look at the elements:

• Evidence of foreign interference to help Democrats win the 2016 election
• Democratic Party politicians being protected from investigation by Ukrainian prosecutors
• The Trump administration refusing to act or help

Here is some of what Ukrainian investigators have found. Solomon again:

Ukraine is infamous for corruption and disinformation operations; its police agencies fight over what is considered evidence of wrongdoing. Kulyk and his bosses even have political fights over who should and shouldn’t be prosecuted. Consequently, allegations emanating from Kiev usually are taken with a grain a salt.

But many of the allegations shared with me by more than a half-dozen senior Ukrainian officials are supported by evidence that emerged in recent U.S. court filings and intelligence reports. The Ukrainians told me their evidence includes:

• Sworn statements from two Ukrainian officials admitting that their agency tried to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton. The effort included leaking an alleged ledger showing payments to then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort;
   
• Contacts between Democratic figures in Washington and Ukrainian officials that involved passing along dirt on Donald Trump;
   
• Financial records showing a Ukrainian natural gas company routed more than $3 million to American accounts tied to Hunter Biden, younger son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, who managed U.S.-Ukrainian relations for the Obama administration. Biden’s son served on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma Holdings;
   
• Records that Vice President Biden pressured Ukrainian officials in March 2016 to fire the prosecutor who oversaw an investigation of Burisma Holdings and who planned to interview Hunter Biden about the financial transfers;
   
• Correspondence showing members of the State Department and U.S. embassy in Kiev interfered or applied pressure in criminal cases on Ukrainian soil;
   
• Disbursements of as much as $7 billion in Ukrainian funds that prosecutors believe may have been misappropriated or taken out of the country, including to the United States.

What should we make of this?

Democrats Getting Foreign Help in 2016?

The first two points above should frighten the "attack on our democracy" crew — looking at you, Adam Schiff, and you, Rachel Maddow — but so far, nothing from that quarter. It seems electoral attacks on our democracy and election matter only when Trump, Russians and Republicans are involved.

And yet:

Ukraine’s evidence, if true, would mark the first documented allegation of Democrats receiving assistance from a foreign power in their efforts to help Clinton win the 2016 election. ... There is public-source information, in Ukraine and in the United States, that gives credence to some of what Ukrainian prosecutors allege.

A court in Ukraine formally concluded that law enforcement officials there illegally tried to intervene in the 2016 U.S. election by leaking documents of Manafort’s business dealings after he was named Trump’s campaign chairman. And a Ukrainian parliamentarian released a purported tape recording of a top Ukrainian law enforcement official bragging that he was responsible for the leak and was trying to help Clinton win.

Solomon notes a 2017 Politico report containing much the same information. One wonders why no one cares.

Joe Biden's Ukraine Corruption Problem — "Well, son of a bitch, he got fired"

The second two bullets above relate to something I've been privately aware of for a while, that Joe Biden has a Ukraine corruption problem and it's serious.

For example, from an April 1, 2019 report by Solomon on Joe Biden, Hunter Biden and Burisma Holdings, the Ukraine's leading private natural gas producer, we find this:

U.S. banking records show Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers into one of its accounts — usually more than $166,000 a month — from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, during a period when Vice President Biden was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukraine and its tense relations with Russia.

The general prosecutor’s official file for the Burisma probe — shared with me by senior Ukrainian officials — shows prosecutors identified Hunter Biden, business partner Devon Archer and their firm, Rosemont Seneca, as potential recipients of money.

Yet in that same report we learn that Joe Biden not only got that prosecutor fired, he bragged about it with the cameras rolling:

In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.

“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat.

Which led Solomon to ask these questions:

Nonetheless, some hard questions should be answered by Biden as he prepares, potentially, to run for president in 2020: Was it appropriate for your son and his firm to cash in on Ukraine while you served as point man for Ukraine policy? What work was performed for the money Hunter Biden’s firm received? Did you know about the Burisma probe? And when it was publicly announced that your son worked for Burisma, should you have recused yourself from leveraging a U.S. policy to pressure the prosecutor who very publicly pursued Burisma?

Joe Biden's Ukraine corruption problem is not just a recent one. The underlying story of how Hunter Biden and his company, Rosemont Seneca Partners, got involved with Burisma in the first place also raises questions:

Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden may have leveraged the [2014] Maidan coup and war in East Ukraine to strike lucrative oil fracking deals in East Ukraine, along with a John Kerry family friend.

Limassol, Cyprus based energy firm Burisma Holdings, collected large energy contracts in the East of Ukraine, with Hunter Biden, Devon Archer and oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, closely tied to the energy production company, which pushed for fracking exploration on land owned by East Ukrainian residents.

Will anyone who matters in the U.S. talk about it?

Why Does Trump's DOJ Not Care?

The last puzzle — after the alleged Ukrainian interference "in our democracy" on behalf of the Clinton campaign, and the Biden corruption allegations — is the lack of response by the Trump Department of Justice. As Solomon's story details, it's not like Ukrainian prosecutors haven't tried to raise the alarm. Yet so far nothing from the Trump administration. Ukrainian prosecutors are still being denied visas to visit the U.S. so they can present their case to U.S. prosecutors.

There's not enough evidence to show why there's been no action on these charges, and, of course, action might still be forthcoming. But we can look at what the effect of burying this story and any potential prosecution might be by looking at who benefits.

1. Burying this story and preventing prosecution benefits Joe Biden. A corruption prosecution of his son Hunter in either the U.S. or Ukraine, plus the knowledge that Biden used his position as vice-president to protect his son, might well be the finishing blow to his still-not-announced 2020 candidacy.

2. Burying this story benefits mainstream Democrats generally, not just Joe Biden. Note that Biden said that Obama was in on the plan to blackmail Ukrainian officials to fire the prosecutor. The benefit to Obama's thus-far untarnished reputation would be undeniable.

In addition, if indeed Joe Biden is the shining knight on which the Party, like a lady in distress, have pinned their ribbons and hopes, his fall could mark the end of those hopes. What do mainstream Democrats hope for from Biden? The defeat of Bernie Sanders in the primary, or anyone like him.

3. In an odd way, burying the story benefits Donald Trump as well. If 2020 will truly be another "change year" for the electorate, whom would Trump rather run against — an old school, been-around-too-long mainstream Party regular (with baggage), or a genuine change candidate like Bernie Sanders, a man whose crowds rival and surpass Trump's own?

It's speculative, of course, to assess motives at this point, but the benefits to those listed are obvious and easy to divine.

However this story develops, stay tuned. We'll learn a lot if it breaks into the mainstream. We'll also learn a lot if it doesn't.
  

"Republicans Fear Losing, Democrats Fear Winning"

Bob Dylan's "Watching The River Flow," with Mick Jagger on vocals, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood on guitars, Charlie Watts on drums and Bill Wyman on bass.

by Gaius Publius

Just sitting on this bank of sand, watching the river flow.

At the start of the year I wrote:

There's something greatly troubling about what the media-fronted #Resistance has morphed into, but I'm having trouble writing about it (it's lightly touched here: "A Nation in Crisis, Again"). Partly the problem is the marshaling of pages of proof; partly the problem is the unstoppable train wreck that's coming. Perhaps I should write about the train wreck instead.

This is about the train wreck, or two of them.

The Kavanaugh Confirmation

It looks like Democrats are going to allow Brett Kavanaugh to be confirmed, that their "resistance" will be minimal, as it has been all along. To explain, let's look at this in the New York Times. Jonathan Martin writes:

Few politicians have a greater stake in Judge Kavanaugh’s fate than these 10 [red-state] senators who are trying to appeal to red-state voters back home, and whose re-election bids will determine whether Democrats win control of the narrowly divided chamber in November. [emphasis added]

According to the article, they think their problem is political, not moral; and they think the voters they have to appeal to are "red-state" (meaning conservative) voters "back home." Or at least they say they think this when talking to the press.

Which according to Martin leads to this craven calculation for Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly, whom I fully expect to vote yes when the confirmation reaches the Senate floor:

And for three of the most moderate Senate Democrats — Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana — the nomination represented an opportunity for them to vote yes on Judge Kavanaugh and demonstrate independence from their party and deny Republicans an issue in the fall campaign. The three had previously supported President Trump’s first nominee for the court, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch.

This leads the writer to this conclusion:

Democrats may not want him on the bench for a host of reasons, but Judge Kavanaugh narrowly winning confirmation would be politically tolerable to many of them...

As Ryan Grim tweeted in response to this article:

Republicans fear losing
Democrats fear winning https://t.co/R1tVmTyQcU

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) September 19, 2018

The entire Democratic caucus supports Minority Leader Schumer's effort to keep Manchin, Heitkamp and Donnelly safe in the next election, which means, in reality, protecting them from having to vote no on Brett Kavanaugh. The whole of the caucus, to a person, is in on this scheme.

There are so many actions Democrats could be taking and aren't. They could be filing for Kavanaugh's impeachment in the House, for example, for lying under oath during his 2006 Senate hearing. They could be releasing all the rest of their nearly 200,000 pages of "committee confidential" documents.

They could be aggressively pursuing the information received from this whistleblower, who says he represents federal employees willing to come forward and talk about Kavanaugh's dealings with his mentor, disgraced Judge Kozinski. Amy Goodman said, "The employees wanted to talk about Kavanaugh’s work as a clerk for disgraced former 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who resigned in 2017 after being accused by at least 15 women of sexual misconduct. But Sanai never heard back."

But Democrats would rather protect three corrupt senators than keep Brett Kavanaugh, the "one ring to bind them," from joining and creating what will be the most radical Supreme Court in our history.

So, what to expect? Look for an accelerated schedule amid much Democratic complaining; ineffective but showy "resistance" from elected liberals; and unless Trump, the public or Ms. Blasey Ford pull their irons from the fire for them, Democratic collusion in a successful confirmation vote the week of October 1 — or faster if Republicans can manage it.

All they want is the win, and they don't care how it looks for them when they get it. Democrats, on the other hand, want to look good in defeat, since that's preferable to them all than abandoning Joe Manchin and his friends.

Also look for both parties to pay a very high price for this when the nation wakes up to what's been done to them — but not nearly as high as the price the nation will pay.

What can we do? Nothing. Watch the river flow.

Climate News

While we're looking at the flow of things, let's add in three climate stories ripped from the most recent headlines. It took less than a minute to find them.

First, this:

Miami’s Existence Is Threatened With As Little As 18″ Of Sea Level Rise

...Miami may not be a major US urban center in a handful of decades.

There are several elements in the equation, but Miami’s existence could be untenable with as little as 18 inches or as much as 15 feet of sea-level rise. The operative question is how much of the city will still exist as a working urban area with citizens, but Miami will be at high risk with only 18 inches of sea-level rise.

It's a very good piece. A number of causes are cited, ten in all. Here are just two: "50% of Miami’s population of 5.5 million lives beneath 6 ft of sea level" and "Miami-Dade County’s low-lying real estate is worth tens of billions of dollars. But it’s already lost hundreds of millions since 2000 due to sea level rise. 10% of Miami’s real estate value could be a write-off by 2045."

When the exodus occurs, it will be in a panic. Best not own Florida land when tide turns against it.

Second this, from Newsweek:

NASA Has Discovered Arctic Lakes Bubbling With Methane—and That’s Very Bad News

...In a NASA-funded study published in Nature Communications, scientists have now discovered a source of methane that has not been accounted for in climate models—methane coming from “thermokarst” lakes.

These lakes form when the permafrost thaws at a faster rate and deeper into the ground than normal. The thawing creates a depression, which then fills with rain water, ice and snow melt. The water then speeds up the rate of the permafrost thaw at the shores of the lake.

The process—abrupt thawing—could speed up the release of methane into the atmosphere.

"Within decades you can get very deep thaw holes, meters to tens of meters of vertical thaw," Katey Walter Anthony, from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said in a statement. "So you're flash thawing the permafrost under these lakes. And we have very easily measured ancient greenhouse gases coming out."

Flash-thawing methane-rich permafrost is a recipe for absolute disaster. Atmospheric methane is extremely potent as a greenhouse gas (GHG) but very short-lived — it resolves to atmospheric CO2 and water, each a greenhouse gas but bound for pound less damaging, in less than two decades. But in its first year, each methane molecule is hundreds of times more powerful than a molecule of CO2. Decades of continuous "flash thawed" methane bubbling up in volume would wreck us.

Finally, it looks like the Paris climate agreement, already behind schedule, was using too high a bar to measure against. Thanks to more sophisticated ways to incorporate methane from melting permafrost into climate models, the amount of "headroom" we have — how much GHG we can still emit and meet the Paris warming target — is even smaller than scientists anticipated:

Paris climate targets could be exceeded sooner than expected

..."Permafrost carbon release from previously frozen organic matter is caused by global warming, and will certainly diminish the budget of CO₂ we can emit while staying below a certain level of global warming. It is also an irreversible process over the course of a few centuries, and may therefore be considered a "tipping" element of the Earth's carbon-climate system that puts the linear approximation of the emission budget framework to the test," explains Thomas Gasser, a researcher with the IIASA Ecosystems Services and Management Program and lead author of the study published in Nature Geoscience.

This is the first time that such a tipping process is adequately accounted for in emission budgets, and according to the researchers, doing so shows that the world is closer to exceeding the budget for the long-term target of the Paris Agreement than previously thought.

Until we stop billionaires from controlling our world, there's not much we can do.

See what I mean? Watching the river flow, or the trains collide.

GP
 

Fracking Has Brought the World to the Brink of Disaster

From this video. The original graph contained global warming data through 2010 and predictions after that. The video author added the red dots, which show actual global warming data for 2011–2017. Note that the red dots are not just above all of the scenarios, including the "reference" or "no countermeasures" scenario. They're also above the 5%–95% band of uncertainty around the reference scenario. In other words, in 2010 the authors of the study considered each recorded data point from 2011 to 2017 to be "highly unlikely" at the time the study was published, each one in the 5% least likely of outcomes.

by Gaius Publius

It's worth looking at two recent pieces from the climate front, not for what they say as their main points, but for two smaller points buried within them.

Two Degrees Warming Is a Ceiling, Not a Target

The first piece is by Jeffrey Sachs, writing in Canada's Globe and Mail. His main argument is that Canada should abandon its plans to build pipelines to carry doomed Alberta tar sands to market and instead build out a smart energy grid connected to the U.S. energy grid to leverage and store  both nation's renewable power capabilities.

About that, Sachs writes:

Oil seems to make politicians lose their bearings. The get-rich-quick mentality or too-much-to-lose thinking is very hard to overcome. Thus, two of Canada’s most progressive leaders, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, have both doubled down recently on Alberta oil sands and the pipelines to carry them to world markets. Whether Kinder Morgan’s controversial Trans Mountain expansion through British Columbia is built, or the company steps away from the project, remains uncertain. Either way, the truth is that Alberta oil sands have absolutely no place in a climate-safe world. Investing in them is almost surely to be investing in a future bankruptcy. [...]

One impulse wants to say to Kinder Morgan and TransCanada, “Okay, build the pipelines. Then we will bankrupt you.” But admirers and friends of Canada should speak honestly to friends. “Don’t waste your hard-earned money on the Trans Mountain and Keystone XL pipelines. Spend your money on sustainable projects tapping Canada’s abundant zero-carbon energy.”

Why is bankruptcy of these pipeline projects inevitable? In the long term, global warming will destroy all investment in fossil fuels (or fossil fuels will destroy us, I hasten to add). But in the short term, it's simple economics (my emphasis throughout):

The world already has vastly more proven reserves of oil and gas than it can safely burn, and a glut of reserves at far lower production costs than Alberta’s oil sands. The marginal costs of the oil sands are typically estimated to be around US$60 per barrel, yet the world will find itself awash in US$30-per-barrel oil as world demand is cut back in the future. There is no way that Alberta’s oil will maintain a profitable niche in a world that is ending its dependence on oil.

"Marginal cost" is the cost of producing additional oil after all needed infrastructure is in place. It's the cost of producing "the next barrel" in an ongoing operation. Clearly, $30 oil trumps $60 oil as energy producers chase each other in a desperate attempt to monetize as much of this doomed asset as they can.

Sachs points out that Canada is already a world leader in energy production from renewable sources: "The share of renewables in Canada’s power generation is already among the highest in the world, exceeded only by Norway, New Zealand, Brazil, and Austria, and roughly the same as Denmark. Yet far more is possible."

All good to know. Yet in that piece is this disturbing data point:

Even with the amount of global warming to date (1.1 degrees C above the preindustrial average temperature), the world is experiencing record hot temperatures, devastating heat waves, droughts, extreme floods, and increasingly frequent high-intensity storms and hurricanes. Climate attribution science links these extreme events to human-induced warming. With two degrees or more of warming, the world could well experience a devastating rise in the ocean level, as well as devastating losses and dislocations from crop failures, temperature-linked diseases, invasive species, forest fires, and mega-storms.

Ignore that Sachs' description of where global warming, as measured by atmospheric surface temperature, is today. "1.1 degrees C above the preindustrial average temperature" is way too low an estimation, as I and others have pointed out many times before. See "Global Warming Has Reached Nearly +1.5°C Already," or look at slides 2 and 3 here.

Slide 3 from this presentation showing global warming since 1850 relative to an 1850–1900 baseline. Slide 2 shows the same data as an animated GIF.

Concentrate instead on Sachs' description of a world with two degrees or more of warming: devastating sea level rise; devastating losses from famine, disease, fire and storms. He missed or under-emphasized other catastrophic effects, like economic collapses, the mass migrations we're already starting to see, and the endless wars they will inevitably cause (which we're also already starting to see).

In other words, two degrees of warming isn't a floor for our aspirations ("we hope to stay below two degrees warming"), but a ceiling for our safety ("above two degrees is a world of hurt").

Two Degrees Warming Is Less than a Decade Away

Which leads to the second piece I want to look at, one by Sharon Kelly at DeSmogBlog. It argues, quite effectively, that the "fracked gas" boom — oil and gas extraction from shale formations — took us down a deeply destructive path, not just because it revitalized a dying industry, but because it simultaneously tragically hobbled development of desperately needed renewable energy sources.

To see that point graphically, click to enlarge the two charts below and note what happened in each around 2008, or watch this brief video from the article for the fuller explanation.

What important for this discussion, though, is this (h/t Naked Capitalism for the find):

The most recent climate data suggests that the world is on track to cross the two degrees of warming threshold set in the Paris accord in just 10 to 15 years, says [Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, Professor of Engineering Emeritus at Cornell University] in a 13-minute lecture titled “Shale Gas: The Technological Gamble That Should Not Have Been Taken,” which was posted online on April 4.

That's if American energy policy follows the track predicted by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which expects 1 million natural gas wells will be producing gas in the U.S. in 2050, up from roughly 100,000 today.

As drastic as that sounds, crossing the "two degree warming threshold" in "just 10 to 15 years" underestimates the problem by nearly a factor of two. Two degrees warming is more likely to come in less than a decade, perhaps a lot less.

First, note again that his pre-Industrial baseline is likely too high. The world is closer today to +1.3 or +1.4°C warming than it is to +1.1°C if the actual lows of the pre-Industrial period are considered or accounted for. Dr. Michael Mann's recalculated baseline puts the warming number at +1.2°C as of 2015, and we've seen a burst of warming since. My baseline is a bit lower than his, which means I put "current warming" even higher.

Second, consider the acceleration that no model has successfully predicted. Everything is happening faster than anyone predicted. Click the link in the previous sentence to see a selection of the numerous articles making that point. Among them you'll find this:

Dangerous climate tipping point is ‘about a century ahead of schedule’ warns scientist
 
A slowing Gulf Stream system means catastrophic East Coast flooding will get much worse.

New research provides strong evidence that one of the long-predicted worst-case impacts of climate change — a severe slow-down of the Gulf Stream system — has already started.

The system, also known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), brings warmer water northward while pumping cooler water southward.

“I think we’re close to a tipping point,” climatologist Michael Mann told ThinkProgress in an email. The AMOC slow down “is without precedent” in more than a millennium he said, adding, “It’s happening about a century ahead of schedule relative to what the models predict.”

"A century ahead of schedule" is your takeaway. Everything in the global warming news is "ahead of schedule" — much of it by a lot. Dr. Ingraffea makes the same point starting at 8:30 in the video. Every scenario in the 2010 paper he discusses, including the "reference" (no intervention) scenario, entirely underestimated what would happen in just the next eight years.

And not by a little — by a lot. The key graph is reproduced at the top. The original graph from the paper contained global warming data through 2010 and predictions after that. Dr. Ingraffea added the red dots in the modified graph above to show global warming data for 2011–2017. The red dots are not just above all of the predictions, including the "reference" scenario. They're above the band of uncertainty around the reference predictions — each one outside the range of outcomes that the models predict are the 95% most certain.

Put another way, the model predicted that each one of the actual 2011–2017 results were less than 5% likely to happen. Each one.

Yet here we are, with "very unlikely" warming staring us in the face, as we poke at a ceiling we should never go above. That's the real message for today.

GP
 

Obama Energy Secretary Named to Board of Utility Giant

A two-party race to the bottom (source)

by Gaius Publius

As one commenter noted after reading this news, "Well, that just says it all." My inner reply: Services rendered; services paid.

From The Hill (my emphasis throughout):

Obama energy secretary named to utility giant’s board

Former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has been tapped to serve on the board of electric utility giant Southern Co.

Moniz, who served under former President Obama from 2013 to 2017, will be an independent director on the board.

“I have long admired Southern Company for its innovative approach to research and development within the clean energy space, and look forward to joining the board,” Moniz said in a late Monday statement.

“Tom is an industry leader and I’m eager to work with him and the entire board in helping Southern advance at a time of great change in the energy world,” he said of Tom Fanning, Southern’s CEO.

Its "innovative approach to research and development within the clean energy space" means ... what? "I love how cleverly they keep their profits flowing"?

Or "I love how nicely they reward me for service to their industry"?

Perhaps the latter. The Hill again:

The company is working to build two new reactors at Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia, the only nuclear power plant currently under construction in the country. But they are years away from completion and billions of dollars over budget.

The Vogtle project has benefited significantly from federal government actions, such as major Energy Department loan guarantees announced last year and Congress’s decision this month to extend the eligibility dates for tax credits for newly-built nuclear plants.

Feathering his nest by irradiating yours. That's Mr. Moniz below. If you see him on the street, feel free to say, "Thank you for your service."

Obama Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz (Getty Images)

Services rendered; services paid.

Obama's Energy Secretary Is Not Alone

Other Obama alumni have taken well-paid Big Energy positions. There's an excellent report here, from DeSmogBlog. The case of Obama's "climate czar" Heather Zichal is particularly galling ... or telling. Obama in 2013:

Obama praises departing climate czar

President Obama on Friday praised Heather Zichal, who is resigning from her post as his energy and climate czar....

"For more than five years, I have been fortunate to have Heather Zichal as a trusted advisor," Obama said in a statement on Friday.

"She crafted my energy and climate change agenda in the 2008 campaign, then again on my Presidential transition, and as my top energy and climate adviser at the White House, she has been a strong and steady voice for policies that reduce America's dependence on foreign oil, protect public health and our environment, and combat the threat of global climate change," Obama said.

How does she "combat the threat of global climate change"? By cashing in her chips at the Bank of Big Energy, like Obama's Energy Secretary just did.

Obama Alums Are Pushing Fracked Gas Exports. That’s Exactly What Trump Wants.

...At least five of these Obama officials now work for natural gas export companies, four of them for Cheniere and another for Tellurian.

Though pitched as the “cleaner fossil fuel” by many of these former Obama officials, the high levels of methane in natural gas carry a climate punch....

Heather Zichal

One of those Obama alums, former top White House climate and energy staffer Heather Zichal, now sits on the Board of Directors for Cheniere. She also recently was named managing director of corporate engagement for the environmental group The Nature Conservancy....

Keep those names in mind — The Nature Conservancy and methane giant Cheniere.

About The Nature Conservancy, Naomi Klein had this to say:

In her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, Naomi Klein reveals that The Nature Conservancy actually owns an oil well in Texas and uses the financial earnings which come from it as part of its funding stream. Further, both BP and Chevron sit on The Nature Conservancy's Business Council.

And about Zichal, Obama and Cheniere:

As DeSmog previously reported, White House meeting logs show that Zichal met twice with Cheniere officials in 2013 while she was working under Obama. Not only was Cheniere the first company to receive an LNG export permit from the Obama administration in 2012, it was the first to receive such a permit in over 50 years.

"Working" on the Cheniere Board of Directors seems to pay well: "According to forms filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Zichal earned $90,000 for her service on the board in fiscal year 2016 and another $90,014 worth of stock options, for a total of about $180,000 in compensation."

Zichel is just one of several top Obama officials profiled in the report. Others include a Director of Public Affairs in the Obama Energy Department, a Coordinator for International Energy Affairs, a Chief of Staff in the Obama's Office of Fossil Energy, and several others.

Would Mainstream Democrats Risk the 2018 Election for Money?

It's really hard not to see these actions as venal. Mainstream Democrats — feathering their nest by boiling yours.

It's also hard not to see these actions as risky. Do mainstream Democrats think they won't take a hit in 2018 when they do stuff like this? Do they even care? Or do they imagine the blue wave (if it comes) will sweep them to power no matter what they do? (One could argue that Hillary Clinton risked her own election for money: Did she not know, when she gave all those Wall Street speeches, that she'd start running for president two years later — and that they'd make a difference?)

I'm amazed at what we're witnessing. As low as the Republicans have sink — and they've reached a decades-long Party bottom in their attempts to "win absolutely" for big money donors — mainstream Democrats are giving them a run for their money, a downhill run, looking for their own Party bottom.

This story has "national tragedy" written all over it.

GP
 

New Study: "Natural Gas" Has No Climate Benefit, Will Make Things Worse

Your methane bridge to nowhere (source)

by Gaius Publius

I've seen this report referenced several times, but none of those mentions is getting traction. So time to repeat. The idea that methane, so-called "clean natural gas" or "clean energy," is a bridge fuel that can make our climate problem better — is a lie.

Not only that, it's an obvious lie. If you want to eliminate dust and grit, say, from blowing through an open window into your home, you don't half-close the window that lets it in. You close it all the way. If you want to eliminate all carbon emissions from burning fossil fuel, you don't start burning a different fossil fuel. You stop burning all fossil fuels, including methane.

That's just common sense. It makes even more sense when you consider that the Big Oil barons who own the oil companies also own many of the methane companies. Of the ten top drillers of fracked gas in the U.S., the largest by far is:

1. Exxon Mobil

The biggest natural gas producer is also the country's biggest oil company and one of the most profitable corporations in the world. Exxon has operations in every continent but Antarctica. Its oil and gas operations range across several states, from Pennsylvania to Colorado, and it also has wells in the Gulf of Mexico and off the California coast.

With the purchase of XTO, Exxon produces nearly 50 percent more gas than its closest competitor. Earlier this year, Exxon began running ads touting natural gas as a safe, clean source of domestic energy. About two-thirds of the company's domestic reserves are now in natural gas, with the rest in oil.

Others on the top ten list include BP, ConocoPhillips and Chevron. So call the promotion of "clean natural gas" a profit protection plan for Big Oil as well.

Do we want Big Oil companies to be profitable? Only if they abandon carbon fuel extraction and go into an entirely different, entirely anodyne business, as makers of party balloons perhaps. Otherwise, they need to die and disappear as companies, the sooner the better.

(I suspect that most people don't realize this — that if we don't kill off the fossil fuel companies, they will kill us off. That's literally true. Exxon and its like really do have to fail and disappear, or be taken down, before anything resembling our smart-phone civilization can survive.)

The Bridge to Nowhere

The common sense wisdom that says "switching to methane fuel won't help" is backed by data. The latest report is nicely summarized by Joe Romm at ThinkProgress (h/t the smart climate site Faster Than Expected):

Natural gas has no climate benefit and may make things worse
Methane leaks in New Mexico's oil and gas industry equal 12 coal-fired power plants.

The evidence is overwhelming that natural gas has no net climate benefit in any timescale that matters to humanity.

In fact, a shocking new study concludes that just the methane emissions escaping from New Mexico’s gas and oil industry are “equivalent to the climate impact of approximately 12 coal-fired power plants.” If the goal is to avoid catastrophic levels of warming, a recent report [pdf] by U.K. climate researchers finds “categorically no role” to play for new natural gas production.

Of course, the carbon lords get their say, even at the U.N. Note that the source is the IEA, which represents the prospects for the industry, not for the humans affected:

Sadly, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has just published a “Commentary” on “the environmental case for natural gas,” that ignores or downplays key reasons that greater use of natural gas is bad for the climate.

As the note in the Commentary says, "With concerns about air quality and climate change looming large, natural gas offers many potential benefits if it displaces more polluting fuels." Directly contradicted by the data, but when there's money on the table, seems even the U.N. helps its owners bend to pick it up.

The Problem With Methane

Part of the problem is that methane is subject to leaks all along its supply and production chain, and while short-lived in the atmosphere, it's incredibly potent as a greenhouse gas.

Atmospheric methane decays to carbon dioxide and water vapor in about 12 years, but note, carbon dioxide is itself a greenhouse gas, and also, prior to decay — that is, when first emitted — methane is more than a hundred times more potent that CO2. Over a 20-year span, the IPCC considers methane to be 84 times more powerful than CO2. If we keep refreshing the atmospheric supply of methane, as we're doing, we renew its global warming power each year, year after year.

In 15 years or less, global temperature will already have surpassed the dangerously generous "two degrees warming" the world is trying to avoid:

“The 2017 emissions data make it crystal clear that urgent and very serious emissions reductions are needed to stop global warming below 2° C, as was unanimously agreed in Paris,” Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said in an email. ...

Rahmstorf said there are currently about 600 billion remaining tons of carbon dioxide that can be emitted if the world is to have a good chance of keeping warming considerably below 2 degrees Celsius, and with some 40 billion tons of emissions each year, that leaves just 15 years.

Those fifteen years will shorten every year we keep increasing emissions, as we already know we will do in 2017. In 15 years, most of us will still be alive — and the world will be completely different in ways few can imagine.

The second problem with methane is that it doesn't just replace some coal, it replaces renewable energy sources as well. Call it the magic of the market. Romm:

Indeed, researchers confirmed in 2014 that  —  even if methane leakage were zero percent  — “increased natural gas use for electricity will not substantially reduce US GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions, and by delaying deployment of renewable energy technologies, may actually exacerbate the climate change problem in the long term.” Exactly. In fact, a 2016 study found that natural gas and renewables are competing directly with each other to replace coal plants in this country.

Joe Romm's data comes from a study published in 2014 in the journal Science, which has just been reinforced by a new study (pdf) at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. Among its conclusions are these (emphasis added):

By 2035 the substantial use of fossil fuels, including natural gas, within the EU’s energy system will be incompatible with the temperature commitments enshrined in the Paris Agreement.

1) The Paris commitment will be exceeded in under 18 years of current greenhouse gas emissions [actually, in 15 years or less according to the latest 2017 emissions data]

2) Non-OECD nations will “fairly” use up to 98% of the 2°C global carbon budget

3) It is highly unlikely that the Paris 1.5°C commitment is a viable mitigation objective

4) Current levels of emissions will use up the EU’s 2°C carbon budget in under nine years

5) To meet its Paris 2°C commitment the EU needs over 12% p.a. [per annum] mitigation, starting immediately

6) To deliver on the Paris commitments, policy makers need a balanced portfolio of CO2 mitigation scenarios with ‘negative emissions technologies’ only included in the exotic minority [i.e., no "Bill Gates and technology will save us" scenario]

7) Methane emissions and atmospheric concentrations are observed at the top end [i.e., worst case] of IPCC scenarios.

9) Carbon dioxide from combustion is the dominant contributor to the long-term climate change impact of natural gas. Methane has a much greater warming effect than carbon dioxide per unit of emissions released but its atmospheric lifetime is short, only about a decade. However, persistently high emissions [meaning leaks] of methane would replenish this loss and maintain this initial warming effect

9a) Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) transport increases the climate change impact of natural gas supply chains [consider that as both parties tout LNG sales — and transport — to Europe]

10) For stabilising at 2°C, reductions in methane emissions must be accompanied by CO2 reductions

And finally:

11) Fossil fuels (including natural gas) have no substantial role in an EU 2°C energy system beyond 2035

The study concludes that "there is categorically no role for bringing additional fossil fuel reserves, including gas, into production."

What to Note About This Report

Readers of these pages know by now what the rest of the country is just starting to discover — that climate change is already affecting American lives in large and tragic ways, and that the madness of burning fossil fuels to satisfy the greed and, yes, pathology of a small handful of billionaires (plus those they control), that madness must end before it ends us.

What seems new here is the absolute finality of statements in the latest climate reports. These are black-and-white conclusions. Again — "there is categorically no role for bringing additional fossil fuel reserves, including gas, into production." No wiggle room in a statement like that; no sugar at all to coat it with.

Once categorical statement like these make it into the insurance company estimates and reports (to name just one industry affected) — that is, once global warming start to affect billionaire money — you'll see a sudden increase in public awareness, to add to the gradual shifts in awareness we're seeing right now.

Not only will it be a wake-up call; it will look and act like a wake-up call.

Will wake-up call change the course of U.S. carbon emissions? Not while money buys politics and policy in the U.S. But it will introduce Sanders-like political chaos into the system. At that point the political battle will be visible, out in the open, with participants from all quarters joining in. Even the corporate news will report on it.

What will be the effect of a wide and visible public battle over fossil fuel use, as the billionaires dig in?

Complete chaos.

GP
 

Massive Permafrost Thaw Documented in Canada, Huge Carbon Release May Be Coming

"So far, so good," though I think they forgot that the ball is going to get larger.

by Gaius Publius

Scheduling note: My comments appear regularly here on Monday and Thursday.

Quick and dirty (very dirty).

I've written many times that things are happening on the climate front much more quickly than anyone anticipates. (Just one example: "The Greenland Ice Sheet Is Melting 600% Faster Than Any Model Predicted," but there are dozens of other pieces that could be cited.)

I've called this tendency to under-anticipate the pace of climate change "being wrong to the slow side." We have a strong (and encouraged) tendency to believe that the relentless march out of the climate range that nurtured human civilization will happen slowly, incrementally, gradually — yet we consistently find out, again and again, in instance after instance, that these changes can also occur in unanticipated leaps and collapses as well.

These leaps and collapses are going to become more frequent, as the pace of change accelerates and larger and more significant elements of the climate system destabilize. Leave a glass of ice sitting at room temperature, and the ice will melt slowly at first, but that melt-rate will inevitably accelerate. Same with a destabilized, out-of-equilibrium climate system.

You could call the accelerating pace of climate change a kind of Snowball Effect — a mirror of what happens when a snowball starts rolling down a hill. After a period of slow and gradual movement, it picks up both speed and momentum (added mass) until it becomes a large, destructive force.

This is another of those stories of rapid change. Via Inside Climate News:

Massive Permafrost Thaw Documented in Canada, Portends Huge Carbon Release

Study shows 52,000 square miles in rapid decline, with sediment and carbon threatening the surrounding environment and potentially accelerating global warming.

Huge slabs of Arctic permafrost in northwest Canada are slumping and disintegrating, sending large amounts of carbon-rich mud and silt into streams and rivers. A new study that analyzed nearly a half-million square miles in northwest Canada found that this permafrost decay is affecting 52,000 square miles of that vast stretch of earth—an expanse the size of Alabama.

According to researchers with the Northwest Territories Geological Survey, the permafrost collapse is intensifying and causing landslides into rivers and lakes that can choke off life downstream, all the way to where the rivers discharge into the Pacific Ocean.

Similar large-scale landscape changes are evident across the Arctic including in Alaska, Siberia and Scandinavia, the researchers wrote in a paper published in the journal Geology in early February. The study didn't address the issue of greenhouse gas releases from thawing permafrost. But its findings could help quantify the immense global scale of the thawing, which will contribute to more accurate estimates of carbon emissions.

Arctic permafrost, as the name implies, is soil that has remained frozen — both on land and underwater — since before the last ice age. That soil is now thawing at an accelerating rate. This releases both methane locked into the soil, and CO2.

About Arctic methane:

Large quantities of methane are stored in the Arctic in natural gas deposits, permafrost, and as undersea clathrates. Permafrost and clathrates degrade on warming, thus large releases of methane from these sources may arise as a result of global warming.[3][4] Other sources of methane include submarine taliks, river transport, ice complex retreat, submarine permafrost and decaying gas hydrate deposits.[5]

But thawing permafrost also releases CO2 itself:

As the permafrost thaws, microbes wake up and begin digesting the newly available remains of ancient plants and animals stored as carbon in the soil. This digestion produces either carbon dioxide or methane, depending on soil conditions. Scientists want to understand the ratio of carbon dioxide to methane gas released by this process because it affects the strength of the permafrost carbon feedback loop: greenhouse gases released due to thawing permafrost cause temperatures to rise, leading to even more thawing and carbon release. 

How much carbon (in aggregated methane and CO2 form) are we talking about?

[T]he Arctic permafrost is like a vast underground storage tank of carbon, holding almost twice as much as the atmosphere. At that scale, small changes in how the carbon is released will have big effects. [emphasis mine]

There's twice as much carbon in the permafrost as there is in the air today. Let that sink in. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is 400 ppm (parts per million by volume). Pre-Industrial atmospheric CO2 was 280 ppm. There's enough carbon in the permafrost to more than double today's 400 ppm number before natural processes start to remove it — and that net-removal of CO2 assumes that humans stop adding their own, something we show no sign of doing.

As the report cited at the top noted, scientists haven't quantified the amount of carbon release yet; they've simply documented the accelerated thawing. Later studies will do that.

Your takeaway, though, is simple — the snowball is picking up speed. Is it an emergency yet? Time, perhaps, to act?

(Update: The sudden-change stories just keep coming in. As I write, a science station on the Antarctic peninsula has just recorded a record-breaking high of 63.5° Fahrenheit, or 17.5 degrees Celsius. Ninety percent of the earth's fresh water is locked up as ice in Antarctica, the melt of which would raise sea levels a stunning 200 feet.)

GP
 

Climate Change in the Age of Trump: A Profit-First Energy Plan

Getting rich on "black gold" and moving into the mansion. It really is just about the money, isn't it? Plus the expectation of dying before the consequences show up. Unlike these fictional folks, most in Big Oil will see those consequences themselves.

by Gaius Publius

As you've noticed, we've turned our attention back to climate here at La Maison, and to the wreckage of the planet we may see manifest in the coming decade (singular).

The climate fight in the U.S. has entered a new phase. It's moved from dealing with a political party that tried to seem to care about the climate, and with which a certain amount of small cold-comfort progress could be made — to dealing with a political party intent on causing the most climate damage it can manage at the fastest rate it can muster ... before it's booted out of office or loses the consent of the governed. (Ponder that last; it's one of the items on offer.)

By now we're all aware that all pipelines will be built, or attempted to be built. But that doesn't encompass the full sweep of America's new climate plan. The party now in power intends to dig all the carbon it can, give all the profits to the already-rich oil and gas industry, which will then sell it at the fastest rate possible to be burned into the air. U.S. carbon emission rates should shoot through the roof.

They're calling that "An America First Energy Plan." Not that Americans will see a dime of profit or wealth from this black-gold rush. It should be renamed "A Profit-First Energy Plan (and the species be damned)."

From the White House website (my emphasis):

An America First Energy Plan

Energy is an essential part of American life and a staple of the world economy. The Trump Administration is committed to energy policies that lower costs for hardworking Americans and maximize the use of American resources, freeing us from dependence on foreign oil.

For too long, we’ve been held back by burdensome regulations on our energy industry. President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule. Lifting these restrictions will greatly help American workers, increasing wages by more than $30 billion over the next 7 years.

Sound energy policy begins with the recognition that we have vast untapped domestic energy reserves right here in America. The Trump Administration will embrace the shale oil and gas revolution to bring jobs and prosperity to millions of Americans. We must take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own. We will use the revenues from energy production to rebuild our roads, schools, bridges and public infrastructure. Less expensive energy will be a big boost to American agriculture, as well.

The Trump Administration is also committed to clean coal technology, and to reviving America’s coal industry, which has been hurting for too long.

In addition to being good for our economy, boosting domestic energy production is in America’s national security interest. President Trump is committed to achieving energy independence from the OPEC cartel and any nations hostile to our interests. At the same time, we will work with our Gulf allies to develop a positive energy relationship as part of our anti-terrorism strategy.

Lastly, our need for energy must go hand-in-hand with responsible stewardship of the environment. Protecting clean air and clean water, conserving our natural habitats, and preserving our natural reserves and resources will remain a high priority. President Trump will refocus the EPA on its essential mission of protecting our air and water.

A brighter future depends on energy policies that stimulate our economy, ensure our security, and protect our health. Under the Trump Administration’s energy policies, that future can become a reality.

Just a few notes; I'll have more to say on this at a later time:

• Wherever this plan says "jobs," substitute "profits." Wherever it says "wages," substitute "revenue."

• "Reviving the coal industry" means just that. Dig it fast, burn it fast, and sell it as widely as possible everywhere in the world. 

• "Energy independence" is a meaningless phrase unless the U.S. nationalizes its oil. All fossil fuel, wherever extracted, is sold at market prices on a small number of exchanges, and only the sellers reap profit. Because the U.S. government is not a seller, it sees not one dime. Because of these markets, oil is fungible. The price of Saudi-dug oil is the same as the price of Exxon-dug oil, all other things being equal. All sellers will charge as much money as they can get; all will hold you hostage to get it.

• "Refocus the EPA on ... protecting our air and water" means spending even more tax dollars on all the additional toxic waste cleanup effort this added drilling, fracking and mountaintop blasting will cause. The EPA will have only one role — the nation's janitor, sweeping up after the energy industry's mess-making.

And finally:

• This will roil the oil market, which is already glutted with supply at unsustainably low prices. Look for energy market crises — and business bankruptcies — to increase, perhaps exponentially. Many smaller fracked-oil companies will go bankrupt, and the banks that financed them may need another bailout.

How to address this? It's still an emergency, just a different kind.

At the Wheelhouse of the Titanic

A metaphor: During the Sanders campaign there was an opportunity to put a new captain in the wheelhouse of the Titanic, one who would actually try to turn the ship instead of just seeming to. Today, however, we're back on the deck, outside looking in. The effort to turn the wheel — mobilize the economy for a fast and radical change of energy source — now has a preliminary step, a preliminary act of mobilization.

To turn the wheel we first have to take command of the wheelhouse, and yes, there are many non-violent ways to do it. It's that or we have to give up, to relax and enjoy whatever days are left of this voyage. (I hear for many first-class passengers — many of those in first-world countries, in other words — the food and accommodations will be comfortable almost to the end, right before the fight for lifeboats begins.)

I mentioned "the coming decade (singular)" above as the window of time left to us. I don't think this is the moment yet to give up, to go dancing, according to our metaphor, one last time on the chilly moonlit deck, the icy mass looming before us.

There really are ways to proceed, and with the change of enemy, new opportunities, avenues of approach we didn't have before. More on that later. This is where we stand now.

GP
 

NASA: Fracking Is Source of Massive Methane "Hot Spot"

This map shows anomalous U.S. methane emissions (or how much the emissions differ from average background concentrations) for 2003 to 2009, as measured by the European Space Agency's SCIAMACHY instrument. The Four Corners area [circled]—the area where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet—is the only red spot on the map. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Michigan; click to enlarge)

by Gaius Publius

Methane, fracking, and global warming — like three musketeers, all for one and one for all.

As anyone who reads here regularly knows, methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas — it traps the earth's heat — just like CO2. When it's burned (for power-generation, for example) it's emitted into the atmosphere as CO2 and H2O (water vapor, another greenhouse gas, by the way). While methane is shorter-lived than CO2, which is stable in the atmosphere and is only drawn out slowly by natural processes, when methane breaks down in the air, it becomes CO2 and other products, including water vapor, which again are also greenhouse gases. So methane, even after breaking down, does long-term damage.

The lifespan of methane in the lower atmosphere is estimated at about ten years and 12 years in the stratosphere, but its greenhouse effect in that brief time is over 100 times the effect of CO2 over the same period.

So, not only is burning methane bad for the global climate (Ms. Clinton, take note), but direct methane leaks are terrible. If the "greenhouse effect" of CO2 (its "global warming potential") is indexed as "1", the greenhouse effect of methane over 100-year timespan is about 30, and and over a 20-year timespan, about 85.

Methane in the Earth's atmosphere is a strong greenhouse gas with a global warming potential of 29 over a 100-year period. This means that a methane emission will have 29 times the impact on temperature of a carbon dioxide emission of the same mass over the following 100 years. Methane has a large effect (100 times as strong as carbon dioxide) for a brief period (having a half-life of 7 years in the atmosphere), whereas carbon dioxide has a small effect for a long period (over 100 years). Because of this difference in effect and time period, the global warming potential of methane over a 20-year time period is 86.

There are many sources of direct methane emissions, including animal husbandry (consider how much beef is consumed in just the U.S. each day; live cows emit methane almost hourly) and also melting Arctic permafrost, both undersea and on land (there's a massive amount of methane sequestered in the Arctic, most of it still there ... for now).

But a new and important source of methane is our increasing dependence on "natural gas" as a fuel for power generation. It's true that burning methane provides more energy per unit of CO2 emission, but the CO2 it emits is still CO2. In addition, methane leaks at every point in the production and usage process, from well heads to pipelines, to facilities that "liquefy" it for long-distance transport, to the transportation vehicles themselves, to delivery to customers, and finally at sites where it's ultimately burned. Every step of the process produces methane leakage.

But the most important source of methane leakage is from the fracking that's increasingly used to extract it.

Put simply, fracking doesn't just cause earthquakes and water pollution. Fracking causes large methane leaks as well.

NASA: Fracking Is Causing the Largest Methane Leak in the Country

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the "four corners" region of the American Southwest, where Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico meet (see map above). We've known for years that there's a massive (visible from space) methane "hot spot" in that region. Now we know why. Fracking.

Via Common Dreams:

NASA Study Nails Fracking as Source of Massive Methane 'Hot Spot'

The 2,500-square mile plume is said to be the largest concentration of the potent greenhouse gas in the country

A NASA study released on Monday confirms that a methane "hot spot" in the Four Corners region of the American southwest is directly related to leaks from natural gas extraction, processing, and distribution.

The 2,500-square mile plume, first detected in 2003 and confirmed by NASA satellite data in October 2014, is said to be the largest concentration of atmospheric methane in the U.S. and is more than triple a standard ground-based estimate. Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is a highly-efficient greenhouse gas—84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, and a significant contributor to global warming.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and funded primarily by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), surveyed industry sources including gas processing facilities, storage tanks, pipeline leaks, and well pads, as well as a coal mine venting shaft.

It found that leaks from only 10 percent of the individual methane sources are contributing to half of the emissions, confirming the scientists' suspicions that the mysterious hotspot was connected to the high level of fracking in the region.

There are more than 20,000 oil and gas wells operating in the San Juan Basin, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that overall annual gas production in the basin is as much as 1.3 trillion cubic feet, mostly from coal bed methane and shale formations.

"NASA's finding that the oil and gas industry is primarily responsible for the 'hot spot' is not surprising," stated the Western Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit public interest law firm. "In fact, the researchers found only one large source of methane not related to oil and gas operations: venting from the San Juan coal mine. This discovery renders attempts to point the finger at other potential emissions sources, like coal outcrops and landfills, definitively refuted."

The article goes on to detail "how problematic current estimates of methane emissions from oil and gas operations are" — meaning that the EPA's estimates of methane emissions (leaks) tend to minimize the problem.

So your first bottom line is, we're not only burning ourselves back to the Stone Age, we're fracking ourselves there too.

Hillary Clinton's Transition Team Is Headed by Ken Salazar, a Major Fracking Proponent...

... and it contains other major fracking proponents and evangelists as well, such as Heather Zichal. Which is your second bottom line.

First, a taste of Ken Salazar's interest in fracking. Note that Salazar was Obama's Interior Secretary:

Former Obama official: Fracking has never been an environmental problem

HOUSTON — Former U.S. Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar said Wednesday morning [February 5, 2014] that he believes hydraulic fracturing is safe, and the energy industry should work to convince the public that it doesn’t pose a safety threat.

Salazar spoke in Houston at the North American Prospect Expo, a three-day conference where landowners from around the globe look to make deals with oil, gas and pipeline companies.

“From my opinion and from what I’ve seen … I believe hydraulic fracking is, in fact, safe,” Salazar said.

Salazar said the oil and gas industry must work to educate the public of the technology and “make sure people are not scared.”

“We know that, from everything we’ve seen, there’s not a single case where hydraulic fracking has created an environmental problem for anyone,” Salazar said. “We need to make sure that story is told.”

Now, on Heather Zichal, former top Obama energy aide, from Steve Horn at DeSmogBlog:

Heather Zichal, Former Obama Energy Aide, Named to Board of Fracked Gas Exports Giant Cheniere

Heather Zichal, former Obama White House Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, may soon walk out of the government-industry revolving door to become a member of the board of directors for fracked gas exports giant Cheniere, who nominated her to serve on the board.

The announcement, made through Cheniere's U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Form 8-K and its Schedule 14A, comes just as a major class-action lawsuit was filed against the board of the company by stockholders.

In reaction to the lawsuit, Cheniere has delayed its annual meeting. At that meeting, the company's stockholders will vote on the Zichal nomination.

The class-action lawsuit was filed by plaintiff and stockholder James B. Jones, who alleges the board gave stock awards to CEO Charif Souki in defiance of both a stockholders' vote and the company's by-laws.

Souki — a central character in Gregory Zuckerman's book “The Frackers“ — became the highest paid CEO in the U.S. as a result of the maneuver, raking in $142 million in 2013, $133 million of which came from stock awards.

Zichal was nominated to join Cheniere's audit committee of the board, and will be paid $180,000 per year for the gig if elected.

Notice that paycheck for sitting on Cheniere's board — $180,000 per year. Does that smell like "thank you" money? It looks like "thank you" money as well. Zichal's anodyne Wikipedia page touts her this way: "A Democratic political operative and energy industry lobbyist ... said [Zichal] was 'absolutely dogged in her pursuit of gaining consensus with external stakeholders'" while pursuing the administration's (methane-centric) "clean energy plan." You don't get a reward from a fracking and natural gas giant for not advocating their interests.

And now Heather Zichal, Ken Salazar and several pro-methane others are a key part of corporate-leaning Hillary Clinton's transition team.

Which brings us to where we started. Methane, fracking, and global warming — like three musketeers, all for one and one for all. Want to stop global warming? In the U.S., you have to first stop fracking — and those who want to enable it. Remember, anti-Sanders activists — the Becky Bond Rule applies here as well.

GP
 

Some Bridge Fuel — Energy Emissions from Methane Surpass Coal, But Oil Emissions Still Rising

Emissions from methane (natural gas) are replacing emissions from coal, but not petroleum (source; click to enlarge).

by Gaius Publius

Methane ("America's clean natural gas") is being touted and sold as the "bridge fuel" from carbon emissions from all sources, including oil. In fact, methane is turning out to be a bridge fuel away from coal only. See the charts at the top and note the rise of emissions from petroleum as methane emissions replace coal emissions.

In the meantime total CO2 emission in the U.S from all sources is essentially flat:

Total U.S. CO2 emissions, 1990–2014 (source; click to enlarge)

Methane may be a bridge fuel from coal, but it's not a bridge to fewer overall emissions, not by a long shot.

This news comes from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (which is touting methane, by the way):

Energy-related CO2 emissions from natural gas surpass coal as fuel use patterns change

Energy-associated carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from natural gas are expected to surpass those from coal for the first time since 1972. Even though natural gas is less carbon-intensive than coal, increases in natural gas consumption and decreases in coal consumption in the past decade have resulted in natural gas-related CO2 emissions surpassing those from coal. EIA's latest Short-Term Energy Outlook projects energy-related CO2 emissions from natural gas to be 10% greater than those from coal in 2016....

In 2015, natural gas consumption was 81% higher than coal consumption, and their emissions were nearly equal. Both fuels were associated with about 1.5 billion metric tons of energy-related CO2 emissions in the United States in 2015.

Three points about this announcement.

First, it's good that coal is being used less and less, but coal still has a large emissions footprint, as this 2006 chart shows.

Second, reducing the use of coal is a mixed blessing. Coal emissions (poisonously) contain particulate matter (various kinds of soot, or as scientists say, "aerosols") that in part act to reduce global warming because they tend to reflect some of the sun's energy back into space before it hits the earth and becomes heat. Dr. Michael Mann has a fuller explanation here.

Bottom line, if we don't reduce coal use, Mann estimates we "lock in" +2°C global warming likely in the early 2030s, as atmospheric CO2 reaches 450 ppm. If we (somehow, miraculously) do eliminate coal use, we lock in +2°C global warming as soon as atmospheric CO2 reaches 405 ppm, a level we've already crossed on the monthly chart (source and discussion here). Climate people call the use of coal a "Faustian bargain."

Third, look again at the total emissions chart above. People, especially in government and the energy industry (like the EIA), like to tout the CO2 emissions reduction "since 2005." That reduction was (a) caused almost completely by the global slowdown in economic activity due to the financial crisis that followed, and (b) not much of a reduction, unless you eliminate most of the bottom of the chart to exaggerate the change (as here).

Is It an Emergency Yet?

Yes. For one thing, methane is not a bridge fuel. I'm willing to bet money that no prospective investor in a methane-burning energy facility is being told that the facility will be torn down in 10 years and replaced with something else, like a zero-carbon power plant. On the contrary, I think investors are being told that putting money into new methane (natural gas) infrastructure is a long-term profit-maker. No bridge fuel for us; just the words.

And it probably doesn't hurt the industry's future that Exxon is the "largest natural gas producer in the U.S."

But more to the point, we just don't have the time, even if methane were used as a true bridge fuel. Atmospheric CO2 is accelerating, with 2014 and 2015 being named, successively, "the hottest year on record." Also, the 10 warmest years in the historical record all occurred since 1998. If we don't put the brakes on now — the real brakes, not just the rhetorical ones — it won't matter who's president for the next eight years, Sanders, Trump or Genghis Khan. They'll all be powerless to stop what everyone can see coming and is panicked about.

For more on why a "WWII-style mobilization" is both possible and necessary, see the section "The Zero Carbon Economy, a Rationing Regime that Works" here. To work to build a Mobilize Now awareness, you might start here.

GP